Red tape being cut for ag marketing boards

By Al Beeber
Southern Alberta Newspapers

The Alberta government is eliminating nearly 30 per cent of regulations for agricultural marketing boards and commissions.

The province said Thursday that it is cutting 28.5 per cent of the regulations including 20 redundancy rules which it says overlap with existing requirements.

The motivation is to streamline rules and provide more time for commissions and marketing boards to “concentrate on growing, stimulating and improving production and marketing the products their members produce,” says the government.

In 1965, the government created the Marketing of Agricultural Products Act which established the Alberta Agricultural Products Marketing Council as the supervisory public agency for the 19 marketing boards and commissions in this province.

That council in 2019 started red tape reduction efforts.

The changes will streamline rules “by eliminating unnecessary regulations and allows marketing boards and commissions to concentrate on helping producers compete, innovate and be more productive,” says the government which has the support of the Alberta Pulse Growers Association.

“The streamlining of regulatory processes allows Alberta Pulse Growers Commission to work more efficiently on behalf of Alberta farmers toward our vision of pulses on every farm, on every plate,” says Shane Strydhorst, chair of the pulse growers commission.